Around 260 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Ankara’s week-long campaign of air strikes against targets of the outlawed group inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, the semi-official Anadolu Agency said on Aug. 1.

Without citing its sources, Anadolu said that among those wounded was Nurettin Demirtaş, the brother of the co-leader of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas.

Ankara has launched a two-pronged anti-terror offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the LEvant (ISIL) jihadists in Syria and the outlawed PKK militants in northern Iraq and inside Turkey after a wave of attacks in the country.

Taz notes that the Turkish air strikes have hit the Syrian YPG (the heroic defenders of Kobane).

Turkey has “joined the war against ISIS”, according to US politicians and the corporate media after a July 23 deal between the US and the Turkish government. The deal gives US war planes and drones access to Turkey’s Incirlik airbase from which to conduct air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

The reality is very different. The US and NATO have actually given a green light to Turkish air strikes against the most effective resistance to ISIS — the left-wing Kurdish-led forces.

They have also foreshadowed supporting Turkish plans to create a buffer zone occupied by Turkish soldiers or Islamist proxies in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). Turkey’s aim is to achieve what ISIS — also known as ISIL or IS — failed to do: prevent the spread of the liberated area of Rojava under the left-wing Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration.

Ignoring growing evidence of collusion between the Turkish state and ISIS, the US hailed the Turkish state’s recent crackdown on leftist and Kurdish activists as a “crackdown on terrorism”.

In fact, this response to Turkey’s repression of the forces actually in the front line against ISIS reveals the West’s “War on ISIS” as a lie.

SPIEGEL: The Turkish government says it is fighting all “terrorists” equally. Why do you view their approach primarily as a campaign against Kurds?

Demirtas: Take, for instance, the number of people arrested in raids across Turkey recently. How many members of IS were among them? A few dozen? On the other hand, more than a thousand Kurds were arrested, particularly youths, on the grounds that they were PKK supporters. These figures say it all.

SPIEGEL: Were you expecting this to happen after the election?

Demirtas: I wouldn’t have put anything past Erdogan before the election, no matter how crazy. He is perfectly capable of setting the whole country on fire if it means maintaining his grip on power. We have been witnessing a worrying shift for some time now. The democracy that we so painstakingly achieved in Turkey is eroding. It is getting worse by the day.

Readers of French can read this important article on the site of Ensemble (the third largest group in the Front de gauche) on the details of the HDP’s political stand

A Habur, the border crossing between Turkey and Iraq, it has been six days that the families of thirteen YPG fighters killed in action against bands Daesh, have been waiting for the Turkish state to allow them to take back bodies of their relatives.

Yesterday, July 31, unable to wait any longer, families of fallen combatants have demonstrated for the bodies of their relatives in order to organsie their funnerals. The Turkish forces of repression responded with tear gas and water cannons to the request from families already grieving the loss of loved ones.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish fighter jets launched a fresh attack against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Saturday, killing 10 civilians and injuring 11 others in the Qandil Mountains of the Kurdistan region, a Rudaw reporter at the scene said.

“We were all sleeping when the Turkish fighter jets bombarded our village,” Ismail Abdula Ghader, one of the injured civilians,said by phone this morning. The bombing targeted Zargali village in Rawanduz district, which is on the outskirt of the Qandil Mountains. The PKK was used the area as a stronghold for many years.

Ghader said the fighter jets dropped bombs over the civilians’ houses and killed six civilians instantly and injured seven others.

The Hurriyet Daily News reported Friday an intelligence source saying that 30 F-16 warplanes shelled 130 targets in the Qandil Mountains both inside the Turkey and in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The source also claimed that Turkish airstrikes have killed 190 PKK guerrillas and injured at least 300 others. The PKK has previously confirmed the death of four members because of the recent aerial attacks in Qandil.

Turkey claims its attacks are “in retaliation” for the killings of two Turkish police officers last week, for which the PKK claimed responsibility.

The latest conflict has possibly brought to a halt a peace agreement reached between Ankara and the PKK two years ago.

Since July 24, Turkish air force jets and artillery have kept up a wave of attacks against the PKK, including five rounds of airstrikes on Saturday that targeted the Qandil Mountains.

As of July 24, Turkey has been pushed to an uncertain process. Unfortunately, the AKP government, government agencies and the military have taken steps that end resolution and peace process and de facto ceasefire.

The political detentions involving our party and constituents and gradually spreading to all provinces; heavy bombardments to Kurdistan Federal Region; prohibition of “Great Peace Rally” to be held by Peace Bloc by very simple reasons; inhibitions to various press and communication facilities; police raids to the several civil society organizations, and particularly to Eğitim-Sen, are the first indicators that next days will be distressing for Turkey’s society.

As of July 24, the President and the AKP put into operation the concept of executing country’s governance over security policy through the military and the police. The President and the AKP have prepared this new period by the political and psychological ground they have created for days. They made the society ready for the conflicting environment by launching psychological operations through their own media.

Erdoğan and Davutoğlu’s Middle East policy covering recent years has created very heavy effects on the expectations of peace and democracy in the society. Erdoğan and Davutoğlu’s new policies after July 24 will lead to irreparable damages. This path will certainly destroy the possibilities of resolution and peace and would create serious social costs.

We emphasize once again strongly that Turkey needs peace and resolution. The solution of our social, historical and political problems is possible by improving mutual dialogue, negotiation and democracy. The extension and continuation of violence will never serve to permanent, democratic and egalitarian solution for any aspect of society.

Turkey is at the very important crossroads for its future. Erdoğan and Davutoğlu’s new policies and practices are not likely to reach a “good” conclusion. The future of Turkey’s society cannot be left to the operations of the military to be performed outside of the country and the police to be carried in the country under the coordination of the Intelligence Agency of Turkey.

The environment of violence created by Erdoğan, who has lost majority in the parliament and his dreams of governing Turkey as “one man” until his death being collapsed, has no limits. His aim is to realize the scenario of a re-election, which would give him back his old power. His plan of ruling the power alone until re-election by making a coalition impossible leads catastrophic situations in the country.

The plan is to ensure a single-party government through re-election by creating the impression of “a comprehensive fight against terrorism.” This plan is to burn the country in order to obtain absolute power. To bring the attacks against Kurdish society together with the fight against ISIL cannot be accepted.

Militaristic attacks and bombardments, political detentions and pressures should be stopped immediately. We have not any problems, which cannot solved by talking and negotiation.

We once again make a call to Turkey’s democracy and peace forces and every conscientious, responsible citizen. Today is not the day of keeping silent and waiting. We cannot just watch in concern the approaches of the AKP and the President who lead Turkey step by step towards a huge conflict by their pursued policies. Let’s strengthen together the struggle for peace, resolution, justice, democracy and negotiation. Every passing minute would make it more difficult to take steps.

On behalf of Ensemble! Mouvement pour une Alternative de Gauche Ecologique et Sociale (Together! Movement for a Left Ecological and Social Alternative), member of the Left Front (Front de gauche), we wish to express our solidarity after the terrible attack which took place this week in Suruç against comrades travelling to Kobanê in order to rebuild a town which has become a symbol.

Your international appeal on the occasion of the demonstration planned for 26 July in Istanbul must reach the wideest possible audience ; active solidarity is also necessary.

Faced with the horror of such an act, we are conscious that the Islamic State (IS) is following a clear objective : to break the heroic resistance of the Kurdish people in Rojava, as well as the solidarity movement which has followed. Like all serious observers of the situation, we know that IS has benefited from the goodwill and even the active complicity of the Turkish government in order to attain its goals. As a formidable adversary, IS does not hesitate to exploit the most reactionary elements in Turkey such as anti-Kurdish racism and the authoritarian tradition coming from the 1980 coup, as prolonged by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

However, we are also aware of the admirable capacity for resistance of the Kurdish people over the last several decades, the mass democratic politicisation which was revealed by the Gezi movement in 2013, especially among young people, and the first signs of an awakening of the militant workers’ movement in Turkey. The remarkable result of the HDP in last June’s parliamentary elections, in extremely difficult conditions, is a remarkable signal.

By killing these comrades, the IS has shown what it fears the most : the common democratic combat of the peoples of the region – a combat which implies a respect for Kurdish reality. This was the cause which the comrades died for in Suruç, and that you are continuing to fight for.

We will do our best to support you by continuing to participate in the solidarity movement with the Kurdish people, with the resistance of Rojava and the democratic and class struggle in Turkey.

Although we cannot be with you this Sunday in Istanbul, we will show our solidarity at this Saturday’s demonstration in Paris calledto condemn the attack in Suruç.

The Turkish army’s ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria to crack down on terrorists was engineered by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), whose objective to regain its one-party government is dragging Turkey into a “civil war,” the leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş, has claimed.

“A temporary government with its temporary prime minister is dragging the country step-by-step into a civil war, regional war. Turkey has already been bogged down the Middle East quagmire because of wrong policies in Syria,” Demirtaş told reporters July 27, before a party meeting in Ankara.

Demirtaş’s criticisms came as the AKP-led government started a comprehensive military campaign against terror inside Turkey and through cross border operations in Iraq and Syria. The target in Iraq is the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and in Syria the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The government strongly slammed the HDP for not condemning the PKK’s recent terror acts, with accusations that it relied on the terror organization.

For Demirtaş however, these operations were designed to let the AKP re-gain its one-party government that it lost in the June polls. “The AKP, as a ruling party already knee-deep in corruption, has begun wrathfully seeking ways to become the government once again,” he said, accusing the government of being responsible for the deaths caused by recent terror acts.

The real architect of this design was President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was the practitioner, he argued. “They should better know that we have no palaces, no red plates, no millions of dollars to lose. We came penniless and we’ll go penniless. You better think about yourself. We have no fear of anything,” he said.

“These massive cross-border operations are the government’s efforts to save itself. These are operations of the palace. The palace has established its own state with a massive budget, cover operations and institutions,” he said.

Peace was just ‘a move ahead’

Demirtaş vowed his HDP would continue to work for the next elections to avoid the AKP stirring up more trouble in Turkey, stressing, “Peace was just a move ahead. There was only step left,” in reference to the halted Kurdish peace process.

In response to Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli’s call for the closure of the HDP on charges of links with the PKK, Demirtaş said, “Parties are opened and closed by the people. They should better give an account of their dirty history.”

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The Charnel-House introduction

.A few months ago, I wrote up a critique of the “decolonial dead end” arrived at by groups like the Indigènes de la République. Despite being welcomed in some quarters of the Left, wearied by the controversy stirred up after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it was not well received by others. Last month, however, a French comrade alerted me to the publication of a similar, but much more detailed and carefully argued, piece criticizing Bouteldja & co. in Vacarne. I even asked a friend to translate it for the new left communist publication Ritual. But before he could complete it, someone describing himself as “a long-time reader/appreciator of The Charnel-House” contacted me to let me know he’d just finished rendering it into English.

The authors of the original piece — Malika Amaouche, Yasmine Kateb, and Léa Nicolas-Teboul — all belong to the French…

Tim Farron raised concerns about a revelation that British pilots embedded with other nations’ forces were conducting air strikes on Syria despite MPs voting against action in 2013.

He argued that the suffering caused by such strikes could lead people to support terror groups such as the so-called ‘Islamic State’.

“The decisions you make there are not based on some overall theological sense of what you should do but on what is right,” he said.

“Is it right for us to attack a sovereign country? Is it right for us to overstep a mandate that we have not been given by the electorate or government? Is it right to incite ISIS, or indeed not to incite them – but to play into their hands and be martyrs.”

In response to a freedom of information request from the human rights group Reprive, the Ministry of Defence disclosed that US, French and Canadian armed forces were deploying UK pilots in Syria.

Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve, said the debate about UK action in the Middle East needed to be more “open and honest”.

“It is alarming that Parliament and the public have been kept in the dark about this for so long,” she said.

Yet more worrying is the fact that the UK seems to have turned over its personnel to the US wholesale, without the slightest idea as to what they are actually doing, and whether it is legal.”

An MoD spokesperson said the so-called Islamic State group was a threat to the UK and clarified the position of the British pilots.

“UK embeds operate as if they were the host nation’s personnel, under that nation’s chain of command,”

“Isil poses a direct threat to the UK and to countries around the world. The UK is not conducting airstrikes in Syria and the government has made clear it would return to Parliament if it proposed doing so.

“We have a long-standing embed programme with allies but there are currently no pilots taking part in this region. When embedded, UK personnel are effectively operating as foreign troops.”

The Independent’s Defence Correspondent Kim Sengupta explained that the revelation could have undermined trust in the Government.

Many people would be concerned that British air power is being used, without Parliamentary authority (which was promised) to launch bombs in Syria.

Tim Farron’s honeymoon period as newly elected Lib Dem leader barely lasted 12 hours after his comments on ISIS and his religious convictions caused a social media backlash.

TheySay.io analysed over 80,000 tweet mentions and 15,000 Tweets relating to Farron over 24 hours and found that whilst social media reaction was initially mostly positive, there was a significant increase of negativity following his BBC Radio 4 interview this morning.

Further analysis indicated that the negativity was due to a variety of topics including but not limited to the current state of the Lib Dems, right wing criticism of his political stance and some bemusement and concern about the influence of his religious convictions.

Below are a selection of random tweets covering some of the points.

Judging by this morning's peculiar interview by John Humphrys @timfarron believes that using airpower against ISIS 'incites' them. Nonsense.

As the first “random Tweet” comes from David Aaronovitch one equally doubts if many people care about what the former Communist, present-day pro-military intervention everywhere, and Murdoch columnist, thinks either.

Farron’s intervention could be put down to a desire to make a stir on the first day of his leadership by appealing to the Liberal Democrats’ ‘anti-war’ past.

Freedom of information request by human rights group Reprieve reveals UK service personnel acted under auspices of US and other nations within coalition

British pilots have carried out air strikes in Syria, marking a significant expansion of the UK’s role in the campaign against Islamic State.

The UK pilots were embedded with coalition forces, including the US and Canada, and the number involved is understood to have been in single figures.

Details of British personnel’s involvement in strikes by allied nations’ forces were revealed by a freedom of information request from the pressure group Reprieve.

This is clearly wrong – it is active intervention in the Syrian civil war without democratic authorisation – even if it remains the case that not many people will be concerned if Isis fighters are killed.

And it is also the case that any support, called for the Kurds, fighting their genocidal enemies, is to be welcomed.

What the masses of the entire world care about ISIS/Islamic State/Daesh is this:

We were prepared for harrowing tales of life under Isis, but never expected positive stories to emerge from the horror, says director Edward Watts.

One cold March morning in Iraq, my small team and I looked out across fields of lavender towards the trenches of the Islamic State, the most feared terrorist group in the world, with a sense of hope.

When, weeks earlier, Channel 4 commissioning editor Siobhan Sinnerton offered me the chance to direct a film about the lives of women living under the rule of the Islamic State – the film that became Escape From Isis – we both knew the project would entail insane hours of relentless work amid tales of unimaginable human suffering. And so it proved.

But neither of us could have guessed that here, on the frontline with Isis, we would find a positive twist to the story.

Through hard work and a series of lucky breaks, I got the opportunity to follow an underground network of activists who, unseen by the world, were trying to free women held by Isis militants and used as sex slaves. That morning, we were waiting for a family of 24 to be guided across the frontline to freedom after eight months in the hands of Isis.

The brutality that people endure inside the Islamic State is difficult to comprehend. One woman’s story will always stay with me. At only 21, Aeida was abducted with her two-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. The militants beheaded people in front of the children and kept the family in a house where women were used as sex slaves.

During her interview, Aeida had just described witnessing a nine-year-old girl being taken away to be raped when she suffered an extreme traumatic flashback and collapsed, struggling to breathe, her face contorted by the horror she had witnessed.

I was torn between the film-maker in me, who knew I needed to record, and the human being, who did not want to add in any way to her suffering by pointing a camera at it. Even after making 20 documentaries, I still find it a difficult balance to strike.

You do see Aeida collapse in the film, but in the edit, I could not watch the material without shedding tears.

Team bonding

For most of the shoot, there were only four of us: me, our main character Khaleel, driver Hazim and fixer Hassan Ashwor, running around northern Iraq in Hazim’s dad’s old saloon. Having a small team allowed me to sneak into places that were off-limits to bigger units – and build the relationships on which our access depended.

The most essential member of the team was Hassan. He had worked as a translator for the US Marines – good preparation for work in television – and was a true TV soldier. His incredible stamina, translating almost continuously for up to 24 hours, helped me to build trust with the secretive rescue network, who had never before allowed cameras to film them.

The humour of our little team carried us through hell; I remember teasing driver Hazim about his quest for a girlfriend as we drove past blown-up buildings and the craters left by roadside bombs.

That cold morning, two hours passed on the frontline with no sign of the family. I decided to snatch a shot of an Isis observation post on the frontline ahead. We wrestled the tripod to the front of the trench and I fitted a long lens. I had just put my eye to the viewfinder when Hassan nudged me: “They’re coming.”

I swung the camera up to the hills and saw the family of 24, a tiny group of black-clad figures, scrambling towards us and freedom.

Everyone – the soldiers, my team, relatives of the escapees – leapt over the frontline and ran helter-skelter into no man’s land to meet them, heedless of the danger. I filmed the soldiers carrying several of the women the final few hundred yards to safety.

The family had walked for two days to escape. They were too exhausted to take another step and were loaded into trucks and driven away. I flicked off the camera and wiped away the sweat. Hassan grinned at me. “No one has seen anything like that before,” he said.

I’m proud that, thanks to all of our hard work, they now can.

Progressive humanity stands with these brave people fighting the Islamic State genociders.

Alexis Tsipras’s grip on power suffers a blow with 32 of his own MPs rebelling as the Greek parliament votes in favour of new austerity measure against a backdrop of violence on the streets of Athens reports the Telegraph.

The German Fiannce Minister, Schäuble, wanted Greece out of the Euro (no doubt to the satisfaction of the ‘left’ critics of Syriza’s leadership ), for a “provisional” period (not enough, would say the ‘left’, the True Finns and Golden Dawn). He also demanded a through-going “depolitisation” of the country;s administration, under close EU supervision (not something the ‘left’ would welcome one suspects).

The details behind this are a lot worse – as presented by Jack Rasmus,

It is a known fact that Schaubel and the ‘right wing’ of Euro bankers and ministers have wanted to eject Greece from the Euro since 2012. In that prior debt restructuring deal, private bankers and investors were ‘paid off’ and exited the Greek debt by means of loans made by the Troika, which were then imposed on Greece to pay. 2012 was a banker-investor bailout, not a Greece bailout. What was left was debt mostly owed by Greece to the Troika, more than $300 billion. Greece’s small economy of barely $180 billion GDP annually can never pay off that debt. Even if Greece grew at 4% GDP a year, an impossibility given that Europe and even Germany have been growing at barely 1% in recent years, and even if Greece dedicated all its surplus GDP to paying the debt, it would take close to a half century for Greece to pay off all its current debt.

Schaubel and the northern Europe bankers know this. In 2012, in the midst of a second Eurozone recession and financial instability, it was far more risky to the Euro banker system to cut Greece loose. Today they believe, however, that the Eurozone is stronger economically and more stable financially. They believe, given the European Central Bank’s $1.2 trillion QE slush fund, that contagion effects from a Greek exit can be limited. Supporters of this view argue that Greece’s economy is only 1.2% of the larger Eurozone’s.

What they don’t understand, apparently, is that size of GDP is irrelevant to contagion. They forget that the Lehman Brothers bank in 2008 in the US represented a miniscule percent of US GDP, and we know what happened. Quantitative references are meaningless when the crux of financial instability always has to do with unpredictable psychological preferences of investors, who have a strong proclivity to take their money and run after they have made a pile of it—which has been the case since 2009. Investors globally will likely run for cover like lemmings if they believe as a group that the global financial system has turned south financially—given the problems growing in China, with oil prices now falling again, with commodity prices in decline once more, with Japan’s QE a complete failure, and with the US economy clearly slowing and the US central bank moves closer to raising interest rates. Greece may contribute to that psychological ‘tipping point’ as events converge.

But there’s another, perhaps even more profitable reason for hardliners and Euro bankers wanting to push Greece out. And that’s the now apparent failure of Eurozone QE (quantitative easing) policies of the European Central Bank to generate Eurozone stock and asset price appreciation investors have been demanding.

Unlike in the US and UK 2009-2014 QE policies that more than doubled stock prices and investors’ capital gains, the ECB’s QE has not led to a stock boom. Like Japan recently, the Eurozone’s stock boom has quickly dissipated. The perception is that stock stimulus from the Eurozone’s QE, introduced six months ago, is perhaps being held back by the Greek negotiations. Euro bankers and investors increasingly believe that by cutting Greece loose (and limiting the contagion effects with QE and more statements of ‘whatever it takes’ by central banker, Mario Draghi) that Grexit might actually lead to a real surge in Euro stock markets. Thus, throwing Greece away might lead to investors making bigger financial profits. In other words, there’s big money to be made on the private side by pushing Greece out.

So, when we are talking about Syriza’s ‘betrayal’ bear this in mind.

Read it carefully.

Most will rightly, dismiss as stale air, calls for a “true” revolutionary party which will abolish these difficulties, and no doubt make the bankers and Schäuble disappear from the Earth’s surface.

But there are serious people inside Syriza, the Left Platform, who offered an alternative strategy to Tsparis and who have not accepted the present deal.

So for these people the choice is between two things: either being “European” and accepting the existing framework, which somehow objectively represents a step forward compared the old reality of nation-states, or being “anti-European” which is equated with a falling back into nationalism, a reactionary, regressive move.

This is a weak way in which the European Union is legitimated — it might not be ideal but it’s better than anything else on the table.

I think that in this case we can clearly see what the ideology at work here is. Although you don’t positively sign up to the project and you have serious doubts about the neoliberal orientation and top-down structure of European institutions, nevertheless you move within its coordinates and can’t imagine anything better outside of its framework.

This is the meaning of the kind of denunciations of Grexit as a kind of return to the 1930s or Grexit as a kind of apocalypse. This is the symptom of the leadership’s own entrapment in the ideology of left-Europeanism.

Kouvelakis cites the Greek Marxist political writer Nicos Poulantzas, who wrote and lived in France for most of his career, to back his anti-EU ideology.

He says that Poulantzas said the following.

Yes, Poulantzas talked about European integration in the first part of his book on social classes in contemporary capitalism, in which he analyzes the processes of internationalization of capital and he clearly considered the European Economic Community an example of an imperialist form of internationalization of European capital within the framework of what he considered the new postwar structural hegemony of the United States.

But inL’État, le pouvoir, le socialisme(1978) Poulantzas offered an alternative to the domination of capital: a fusion of direct and representative democracy based ont eh workers’ movement and civil society. He famously stated that the state, is a ” « condensation matérielle d’un rapport de force entre les classes et fractions de classe » (a material condensation of relations between classes and fractions of classes).

The European Union is a judicial and economic framework which is, self-evidently, linked to these relations of changeable power.

It is not only a cabal of finance ministers, EU Commissioners, and neo-liberals who can do as they will – if there is a large enough power to stop them.

To change the EU, to fight neo-liberalism, requires a different relation of force: based on Europe-wide unity between the popular classes and lefts.

It means a political movement, across borders, with institutional weight.

The European Parliament, without any effective influence on EU decision-making, which is essentially inter-Ministerial and Commission based, is nevertheless a point where these bonds can, and are, made, through groups like the European Left Party – however weak they may be at present.

To leave the EU is to leave these potential ties of unity.

It is to give up the game at the first sign of difficulty – to follow those, misguided or simply opportunist ‘friends’ of Syriza who now turn on them when they have run into trouble.

It is to set the course for naked domination by the forces of international capital.

Or to put is more simply, no country, nor left, is in a position to break free of the IMF’s clutches, not to mention world financial markets.

Those on the Syriza left who proposed a Grexit, the centrepice of their economic plans, have yet to answer the point: would they have either offered a viable package, and how would they have warded off the financial locusts described by Rasmus?

They have yet to give a serious response.

A ‘New Britain’.

The Greek crisis has been a perceived as proof that the ‘pro-European’ left has failed, largely by those who were already convinced that this is so.

Briefly basking in Syriza’s reflected glory they have now returned to their own political projects.

In France, apart from the anti-Euro and ‘Sovereigntist’ Front National, a minority of the Parti de Gauche (45%) voted at their recent conference for this as part of a general “Eurosceptic” line (Libération). Their leader, Jean–Luc Mélenchon, has made frequent nationalist and anti-German remarks during the Greek crisis.

In Britain some see the Greek crisis as a sign to join in the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union.

This, Owen Jones dreams, would ” focus on building a new Britain, one of workers’ rights, a genuine living wage, public ownership, industrial activism and tax justice. Such a populist campaign could help the left reconnect with working-class communities it lost touch with long ago.”

Unfortunately this option will appear on no Referendum Ballot paper, when, one assumes the believers in a New Britain will mark their slips in the same way as the ‘populists’ of the far-right, and hard-line anti-socialist economic liberals.

As Jim Denham rightly says, “The left should fight, not to go backwards from the current bureaucratic, neoliberal European Union, but forward, to a democratic United States of Europe, and a socialist United States of Europe.”

In the meantime here are some serious articles by people the Tendance respects (though disagrees with) on Syriza and the present crisis:

Two-thirds of manufacturing jobs in the UK are sustained by trade with the rest of the EU.

Between 2009 and 2011 the number of manufacturing jobs in the UK dependent on trade with the EU grew by 15 per cent.

But it is not just the economics that make membership crucial it is also the protection that workers have because of the EU.

Talk of employment directives may seem dry but protecting our members rights at work have come about because we belong to the EU, and because Unite and other trade unions have fought long and hard to achieve them.

Parental leave has been extended to at least four months for each parent no matter what type of employment contract a worker may be on.

Thousands of workers in part time jobs can no longer be treated less favourably than their counterparts who work full time.

Bosses don’t want anything that might interfere with their right to hire and fire at will so anything that provides protection for temporary agency workers from gross exploitation are hard fought. But we have been able to do it.

One of the major protections for workers is the transfers of undertakings directive a vital piece of legislation that guarantees workers’ rights and obligations in company takeovers and mergers – there was a time when companies could dismiss and automatically sack their entire workforces upon the transfer or sale of a business.

The working time directive protects workers from being forced to more than 48 hours on average and guarantees breaks during and between shits.

And lest we forget – guaranteed paid annual leave, of at least four weeks (28 days a year) – which now thanks to Unite has to be paid at average pay.

There have been massive improvements on equal pay; the right to be consulted on redundancies; to have information about your company and for workers in multinational companies the right to be heard and consulted at European level and improvements on health and safety.

Tory Eurosceptics and Ukip echo the right wing and defeated Tea Party in the United States offering Britain a prospectus of becoming an offshore financial centre – like Hong Kong. Left to them we will become Europe’s economic and political renegade.

If the Tories and Ukip get their way they will set us on this calamitous course to exit the EU. That’s why manufacturing workers need to vote Labour on 7 May.

Maiduguri, Nigeria (Agence France-Presse) : Suspected Boko Haram militants have killed nearly 150 people in northeastern Nigerian villages, mowing down men and children while they prayed in mosques and shooting women preparing food at home, witnesses said on Thursday.

Dozens of militants stormed three remote villages in the flashpoint Borno state on Wednesday evening, setting houses ablaze in the bloodiest day of attacks by the extremist group since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in May.

Gunmen killed at least 97 people in Kukawa, the worst-affected village, a local who gave his name as Kolo and who said he had counted the bodies told AFP.

“They wiped out the immediate family of my uncle… They killed his children, about five of them,” Kolo said.

A fisherman who witnessed the attack corroborated the death toll.

‘Victims as Young as Four’

Babami Alhaji Kolo, another witness in Kukawa who fled to the state capital Maiduguri, said more than 50 militants had stormed the village.

“The terrorists first descended on Muslim worshippers in various mosques who were observing the Maghrib prayer shortly after breaking their fast,” he said.

“They… opened fire on the worshippers who were mostly men and young children.

“They spared nobody. In fact, while some of the terrorists waited and set most of the corpses on fire, others proceeded to houses and shot indiscriminately at women who were preparing food,” he said.

Malami Abdulkareem, an Arabic teacher in Kukawa, said some of the victims were as young as four.

“The attackers did not spare even children between four and 12 years old who went to mosques with their fathers.

“I saw at least nine kids who were killed in two mosques,” he said.

A military source in Maiduguri, who refused to be named, confirmed the attack but could not yet give a death toll.

“The military responded with aerial bombardments on terrorist positions,” he said, without giving further details.

‘Volleys of Bullets’

In two other villages near the town of Monguno, meanwhile, gunmen killed 48 people and injured 11 others, local lawmaker Mohammed Tahir and witnesses told AFP.

“They selected particular male residents from among the crowd of worshippers… and opened fire on them before setting the two villages on fire and razing them to the ground,” Tahir said.

Another resident who managed to flee said the militants arrived in vans and on motorcycles.

“Many of us managed to escape amid volleys of bullets,” said the resident who asked not to be named for safety reasons.

Kukawa is around 50 kilometres (30 miles) away from the two villages near Monguno.

All three are located near Lake Chad, which straddles Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon and has been a focal point of the unrest.

Boko Haram had captured scores of towns and villages in the northeast last year, but has since been pushed back into hide-outs by a four-nation military offensive that kicked off in February.

Despite their territorial losses, the insurgents have kept up their deadly raids, explosions and suicide attacks on “soft” targets such as markets and mosques.

And the armed group has intensified its campaign of violence since Buhari came to power on May 29 vowing to crush the jihadists’ bloody uprising that has claimed at least 15,000 lives.

Since then, some 400 people have been killed in attacks blamed on the extremists, who have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group, according to an AFP tally.

The leader of the Islamic State militant group that controls tracts of Syria and Iraq has accepted a pledge of allegiance from Nigerian Islamists Boko Haram, his spokesman said, calling on supporters to fight in Africa.

Boko Haram, which has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds during a six-year campaign to carve out an Islamist state in northern Nigeria, pledged its allegiance last week, highlighting increased coordination between jihadi movements across north Africa and the Middle East.

“Our caliph, God save him, has accepted the pledge of loyalty of our brothers of Boko Haram so we congratulate Muslims and our jihadi brothers in West Africa,” Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani said in an audio message, referring to his group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

So far as we can tell the reaction of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) to Boko Harem centres on demands for no outside military intervention.

Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls and US policymakers and the “free press” have exploded into a fit of pro-interventionist hysteria. It’s hard to escape media reports about the ruthless cruelty of Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau and his vow to sell his hostages into slavery.

…..

It is widely conceded that the popular base of Boko Haram is a response to severe economic inequality that has disproportionately impacted Nigeria’s northern region. Unlike the south, Nigeria’s north faces severe problems meeting basic human needs of education, healthcare and clean water. Unemployment among young males in northern Nigeria “is in excess of 50 percent.”

“..the great majority of people in the UK are hardly aware that this is a major war – and that Britain is at the centre of it.”

That,

While one intention was seriously to wreck the Tunisian tourist industry, leading to higher unemployment and more anger and resentment, providing a better environment for recruiting young people to the IS cause, it was probably part of a much wider intention to bring the conflict home to the coalition of countries now engaged in the air war.

This makes for uncomfortable connections, especially as most people in Britain simply do not recognise that the country is part of a large coalition that has been waging a major air offensive on IS forces in Iraq and Syria for almost a year.

He concludes,

One of the grim ironies of the Sousse attack is that the appalling loss of life might alert more people in the UK to the true extent of the war. Equally, IS will no doubt encourage further attacks on the countries at war with it; counterterrorism forces in countries as far afield as the US, Australia, Canada, France and Britain will accordingly be intensifying their work.

It is just possible that the Sousse massacre will turn out to be an isolated attack on British nationals, but it’s very unlikely. The reality is that the war with IS in Iraq and Syria is beginning to extend beyond those countries and the region – even beyond the established battlegrounds ofAfghanistan and Libya. What happened to the holidaymakers in Sousse may only be the beginning of a new phase.

If it is a “war” against Daesh we can be sure we know today where the UK government stands.

MPs should consider allowing Britain to bomb Islamic State targets in Syria, the defence secretary is to say.

The RAF has been carrying out strikes in Iraq since September but Michael Fallon will say Parliament should look at the case for missions in Syria too.

The UK does not need the backing of MPs to launch raids but Mr Fallon has said the Commons will have the final say.

He will suggest terrorist attacks, such as Friday’s tourist murders in Tunisia, may have been planned by IS in Syria.

Thirty of the 38 tourists killed on the beach in Sousse on 26 June have been confirmed as British. Student Seifeddine Rezgui, 23, said to have had links to IS, was shot dead by police after carrying out the attack.

Prime Minister David Cameron later said IS posed “an existential threat” to the West, and its members in Iraq and Syria were plotting “terrible attacks” on British soil.

Britain edged closer to bombing Islamic State extremists in Syria after the Defence Secretary said it was “illogical” to attack jihadists in Iraq but not over the border.

Michael Fallon said a new Commons vote would be needed before the RAF carried out air strikes against Islamist fighters in Syria.

But he insisted there was no “legal bar” blocking Britain from attacking extremists in either country.

RAF Tornados and drones have been bombing the jihadists in Iraq since last September as part of a US-led alliance.

But Mr Fallon said: “ISIS is organised and directed and administered from Syria and there’s an illogicality about not being able to do it there.”

Where does the StWC stand?

Will it ‘defend’ the genociders of Daesh, and the European volunteers for its racist Einsatzgruppen from this bombing?

We say:

Another foreign intervention in Syria and Iraq is a bad idea, ethically and in terms of Realpolitik. The UK and the West have not opposed support for the reactionary forces of Al Nusra and other Islamist murderers. Their allies, such as Saudi Arabia, actively back these reactionaries. They have not stood against the threat of Turkish ‘Neo-Ottoman’ policy. They had not stood against Shia sectarian killings in Iraq.

The possibility that they will encourage any kind of democratic outcome to the civil war, and a replacement for the Assad regime with a progressive alternative is non-existent.

But to make opposition to this bombing our chief objective is wrong.

We should be backing the democratic, largely Kurdish forces, of the People’s Protection UnitsYekîneyên Parastina Gel,, battling the genociders and their International volunteers on the ground.

There is little we can do in this tumult, but we are must use all the resources we can to help our Kurdish sisters and brothers who are fighting for dear life.